Hacker News Reader

Comment by Latty | Hacker News Reader

The idea workers have to suffer under "great men" to produce things of value is provably untrue and just an excuse by those "great men" to act in unacceptable ways, while taking credit for the work done by those people.

A good CEO can of course provide value, but pretending they are alone responsible for success, and abusing staff is a good way to achieve that success is just wrong. Burning out passionate people is a good way to create short-term profit, it isn't "greatness".

View on HN

Suffer? What are these workers - slaves? Duped cult members?

You people are crazy. Since when is hard work and ambition something to be scorned?

It's pretty easy for you now, from your obvious position of wealth and privilege, to now ridicule those values which built the very civilization you are now inheriting and trashing. Talk about not having skin in the game.

I'm genuinely confused by your post. Do you personally know the person you're responding to? Nothing about his public information seems to warrant this level of vitriol, but maybe I'm missing something.

I'm not sure how you read any of that into my post, but it doesn't follow at all from what I said.

It’s kind of like how some actors really only get into “method acting” when it allows for them to behave like assholes on set. The idea that one must be a jerk to do “great things” is a self serving lie by rich and powerful people who want to excuse their misbehavior.

If it were provably untrue then you would have proved your point. My opinion is not invalidated by your opinion.

My post wasn't saying that my entire point was provable, just that it was specifically trivial to show you can create great work without that suffering.

If you can't think of a single example of a valuable thing being made by a company without an abusive auteur CEO, then I guess we see "value" very differently.

The rest of my post argues that there is no way to justify that harm given we know the work can be achieved without it.

"In the absence of data, I'll take my opinion over yours." - Former Boss

Reply on news.ycombinator.com